


you look so tired-and-happy

by jonsrightrib (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Dread, Gen, no beta we die like Mechs characters, pretty light on the actual comfort though whoops, set just pre-Out, there’s no real plot I just wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24751570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/jonsrightrib
Summary: the musings of Nastya Rasputina on the cold, being an almost-immortal, and drinking with your brother as both of you have a bad nightalso there's nail polish involved for like half a line, if that sweetens the deal
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 15
Kudos: 84





	you look so tired-and-happy

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I just really love their sibling vibe and the Cain Instinct discord (I probably need to actually interact with y'all rather than backreading every few hours) got me in my emotions so have this hc-heavy thing
> 
> This has some immortal existential dread, acceptance of death, alongside some references to Carmilla being Not Great
> 
> Also it sorta references Out so...

Nastya Rasputina is cold. Unfortunately, it isn't unusual, not for any given point of her life. Cyberia was cold, the empty marble halls of the palace colder still, in more ways than one. The very last of her blood, the very last of her bloodline, had spilled onto snow that the revolution had turned to dirty slush. She'd woken up on a cold slab, reached out with frozen fingers for someone, anyone, she hadn't been alone when she died, was she alone again? She prays to anything that might listen that she isn't alone again, oh god she's so cold, so cold is she dead? Her hand latches onto an arm even colder, and the smile she sees is sharp and cold, and is she ever going to be warm? ~~is she really so empty that there's nothing to be warmed?~~

She wakes with a start.

It takes her a moment to realise she's in her quarters, not the doc's lab, that her hand is wrapped around her own, and both the duvets she has on have fallen off. She just got cold. She doesn't need to read into that at all. She doesn't need to think about how close her own arm had felt to Carmilla's when she'd woken up cold and in pain and her whole body in a greyscale mockery of her skin. Aurora hums at her, but it doesn't feel quite right, hasn't in a while. The nightmares keep getting worse, and she keeps wondering about Theseus's ship, whether she is really Nastya and if her love is still the same. She needs to stop thinking, really. She needs to not be doing that.

Her room is far too cold, and she's not getting back to sleep tonight. Ah well. May as well find somewhere warmer.

She doesn't really want to go to the engine room, not anymore. Not if she wants to stop thinking about everything. She shrugs on her coat. Everyone else is asleep, so the kitchen should be fairly empty, and she can turn all the ovens for warmth. Even if the corridors are cold between her and the ovens.

When she gets to the kitchen, though, the lights are on dimly. She tries to school her face into indifference, because she'd really rather not have to explain what she's doing here. She shoves the door open, to reveal someone slumped, head in hands, over the table. Jonny.

"You okay there?."

Jonny looks up at her, and he's crying. Jonny never cries, hasn't in all the eons she's known him. No matter what was thrown at him when it was just the two of them under her ire, he had never cried in front of her.

"Nastya? Are you ok? It's..."

"Jonny, you're crying."

He reaches up with a shaking hand, and brushes his cheek.

“Oh. That's not...what's wrong?"

"I just...Jonny, you never cry."

He smiles up at her very slightly.

"You're my little sister. You aren't supposed to see me cry."

"You..."

"Not often. When I remember certain things. What brings you to the kitchen at this hour?"

"I woke up."

"Her?"

"Do you ever dream about New Texas?"

"From time to time. Was it about Cyberia?"

"It was so cold there. I was always so cold, and I didn't even know it."

She doesn't need to tell him that she's still cold now.

"New Texas was dusty. But the stories...the sunsets..."

"What woke you up?"

Jonny shrugs, but she's gotten pretty good at following his train of thought.

"Can you feel it?"

"Our story? Yeah."

"We're moving into the final chapters, aren't we?"

He nods, and Nastya sees just how young he'd been when the doctor had gotten to him, juxtaposed against the age that comes from everything he's seen. She knows he's seeing the same in her.

"You know mine is sooner than yours, don't you?"

He smiles slightly at her, because he knows she's fine with it. They've both been ready for a long time, but never for one another's. She can see in the smile that hint of bitterness that means he knows he'll outlive her.

"The same as I know I'll be the last."

They lapse into silence. Neither of them like to talk about...anything, really. She wasn't brought up to talk about her feelings, and New Texas didn't seem like that kind of place either. Besides, she's never found the words to describe the way that hiraeth and nostalgia and longing and acceptance blend when you've been feeling them for long enough to convince people you're an immortal. She doesn't tell him about how she's beginning to understand how she dies, how it gets closer with every bit of the Aurora she loses. His head is bowed, fingers tapping lacklustre on the table, and she knows he's keeping things back from her too. She doesn't feel betrayed, though. Their stories have been intertwined for longer than most, and there are chapters they have to live through alone.

Jonny leaps to his feet, jogging the table and stirring her from her thoughts.

"No more of that, not tonight."

"I'm not intending on sleeping."

"Neither am I."

He flicks the kettle on, and starts rifling through the drawers of a cabinet that hadn't originally been in the kitchen, but had ended up there in one of the attempts to stop Ashes from trying to cook.

"Jonny?"

"We're going to paint our nails and you're going to give me that coat, because I can see the holes in it, and you're going to make us that drink you always used to make, and we're not going to think about all of this."

"I...Jonny, you don't need..."

"Nastya, it isn't gonna keep you warm with all those holes in it."

He crows in triumph as he clearly finds the drawer with the nail polish.

"The others?"

"Oh," he looks up briefly, and fires off two rounds into the doorlock "Sorry, Aurora."

"You're being soft tonight."

"You know I'm not always an asshole."

He brings the box over to the table, and sets it down.

"I'll get on with our drinks, then."

"Coat."

She shrugs it off, trying to ignore the sudden cold of the room. He catches it without paying much attention to the throw.

They didn't always have control over what could happen, not like they can now. Everyone jokes that Jonny's the first mate, but she knows that they'll follow his orders when it comes to keeping them safe. Back before, they used to sneak into the kitchen whilst Carmilla was out, and pour any available bottles into a mug, then half-fill it with some concoction of Carmilla's that managed to override any metabolism issues with getting drunk. The result was disgusting, but it got the job done faster than just drinking from the bottle, conserved their stock of Carmilla's probably-actually-poison, and more importantly, was warm.

Soft fabric wrapped around her shoulders, and two mugs appeared in front of her.

"You were shivering. Is it..."

"Yeah. It's getting worse. Is yours?"

She can feel him shrug from the contact on her shoulders.

"Louder."

The hands leave, and she hears Jonny sit back down as she starts to rifle through the cupboard. Most of the bottles are earmarked by the others, but she decides to call older sibling rules, and pours them in anyway.

"Tim hid some of that stuff from Sirius 7 on the top of the cupboard."

"What, so you can't reach it?"

"Hah hah, fuck you."

She takes the advice anyway, and pours slightly more than necessary from a luminous blue drink claimed by Raphaella. Should speed up the proceedings. Or kill them both. Same thing, really. The kettle finishes boiling, and she tops the mugs off, then picks both up and brings them back over the table, to where Jonny is patching a cluster of bullet holes in her coat.

"Drink up."

"You're going to want me to finish sewing this up before we start drinking. You may as well start picking out a nail polish."

She does just that, picking out a shade of red that matches very few of her clothes, and serves no purpose but to look pretty. She gets her blanket wrapped close around herself, and settles down to watch Jonny's practised needlework. It's always been slightly magical to her, the way he does it with such ease, especially after he'd tried to teach her way back when.

He makes fairly short work of it, and hands it back to her folded, then snatched the polish from where she's been fiddling idly with it.

"You're supposed to be drinking and feeling better."

"So are you. What colour do you want?"

He hesitates a second over the box, but picks out a deep green colour that Nastya barely remembers was worn by Scuzz.

"Complimentary colours. Drink up."

They both lift their mugs, drink. Nastya paints Jonny's nails appallingly, Jonny does a passable job of her's despite the drink. They both don't talk about it anymore, and pretend all they have to worry about is the hangovers they'll have tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> I love them and that means I can give them One TM nice thing, and it's each other.
> 
> Title from No Suprises by Radiohead, which has a certain Nastya vibe to it and also happened to be on the radio whilst I was writing this
> 
> I had to reupload this, so sorry to anyone i accidentally confused


End file.
